One would be hard-pressed to find a theme more important in the teaching of Jesus than the Kingdom of God. Everywhere you look in the Gospels, the Kingdom is close at hand. You don't have to search long to find it. With great regularity it's mentioned by our Lord who both heralds its coming and describes its presence and therefore it should not surprise us that the kingdom makes an appearance, a very important appearance, in the prayer which Jesus taught his disciples to pray. Already at this point, having taught them to seek the Father in Heaven and request the hallowing of His name, Jesus now leads His followers and us with them to pray, Your Kingdom come. However, despite the central place given to the kingdom in Jesus' teaching, I think that many Christians struggle to fully grasp what exactly is meant by that phrase, the kingdom of God. Would you have an answer ready if I were to ask you this morning how to define it? Would you know how to express that concept in your own words? If you're uncertain what you would say, then I suspect that you are not alone. Historically speaking, we have not had a lot of opportunity to acquaint ourselves with kings and kingdoms in our part of the world. And biblically speaking, it is a topic which the scriptures cover in such broad and varied ways that it's really hard to get a hold of. Nevertheless, we ought to try. Because if Jesus wants us to pray, your kingdom come, then we ought to have some notion of what the kingdom is, and what it would mean for it to come. And it is to that end that I want to, this morning, take a wide angle view on the kingdom. looking at it from the scriptures as something which is promised in the Old Testament, introduced in the New Testament, and awaits completion in the future. And only when we grasp the full scope of the Bible's teaching on the kingdom in this way, will we be able to really comprehend what it means to pray, in the present day, our Father in heaven, your kingdom come. So let us together mine the riches of the second petition in the Lord's Prayer this morning under the headings, kingdom past, kingdom present, and kingdom future. Kingdom past, kingdom present, and kingdom future. The first stop on our journey to understanding the kingdom of God is to consider the kingdom past. which is to say the kingdom prior to Christ's arrival on the scene. Now maybe you wouldn't think that the Old Testament has much to tell us about the kingdom of God since, as we've already stated, Jesus heralded its arrival. Then he taught us to pray for its coming. It seems like something which is only coming in in the New Testament, but the language of kingship is very much present in the Old Testament, as I hope you have observed and noticed as we've sang some psalms this morning. On the one hand, you have many general recognitions of God's reign and rule over creation, over all of creation, which are scattered throughout the Old Testament Scriptures. Listen to Psalm 47 verse 2, which proclaims that the Lord, the Most High, is to be feared, a great king over all the earth. He's God over the nations. He rules by might as he is the creator of all mankind. And this reign extends even over those who could be categorized as God's enemies. The psalmist praises the Lord in Psalm 66 verse three saying, say to God, how awesome are your deeds, so great is your power that your enemies come cringing to you. You see, there's a sense in which God is always ruling over everything in power. He is in control. He is directing all things in accordance with His eternal decree. And yet, on the other hand, the Old Testament also bears witness to God's particular reign over a particular people as He establishes for Himself a covenantal kingdom in the midst of the nations. It was that kingdom which He established with Israel. And the place of Israel as the kingdom of God is shown very clearly to us in the words of Yahweh to Moses in Exodus chapter 19 verses 3 to 6. Here's what we read there. The Lord called him, him being Moses, out of the mountain saying, Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel, You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples. For all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. And so we see there in that Exodus passage that it's true that God is king over all, everyone belongs to him, all the earth is his, and yet in the midst of that earth, in the midst of those nations, he selected for himself a peculiar people, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation among the people of Israel. So while God has exercised his power and sovereign control over the whole world ever since its creation, it was also the case that for most of the Old Testament period, his reign was most visibly manifested among the people of Israel. It was Israel that he redeemed for himself so that its citizens might worship and serve him. And this is why when Israel eventually demanded a human king to rule over them, like the other nations, that the prophet Samuel was so deeply offended. Maybe you remember that story from 1 Samuel chapter 8. Samuel perceived the request of the people as an affront to the divine kingship of Yahweh over his kingdom of priests, over his holy nation. Nevertheless, even when God did grant Israel a human king, that human king was intended to rule Israel under Yahweh, the true king. But this seems to create a serious problem. If God erected a kingdom in the Old Testament among the people of Israel, then how could it be? that Jesus introduced the kingdom and prayed for its arrival in the New Testament. The kings have already come, has it not? We quickly solve this problem. It's really not all that hard. We quickly solve it by taking a second look at the Old Testament where we find hints that the kingdom of Israel was only a temporary and provisional kingdom. Even the Old Testament saints who had a first-hand experience of that kingdom looked for a kingdom to come. Consider the prophet Micah. Having prophesied in the early chapters of his book, the future judgment of Samaria, the future judgment of Jerusalem for their sins, Micah in Micah chapter 4 begins to prophesy the restoration of God's people in what he calls the latter days. And then he begins to explain what it is that God would do in those days. What was it that he would do? Well, among other things, we read of these plans in Micah 4, verses 6 to 8. In that day, declares the Lord, I will assemble the lame and gather those who have been driven away and those whom I have afflicted. The lame, I will make the remnant. and those who were cast off, a strong nation. And the Lord will reign over them in Mount Zion from this time forth and forevermore. And you, O tower of the flock, hill of the daughter of Zion, to you shall it come, the former dominion shall come, kingship the daughter of Jerusalem. That's what's coming, the prophet Micah says, in the latter days. In short, God promised in days to come to make a new kingdom out of the remnant who survived the judgment. And that kingdom would never fail. It was of this same kingdom that the prophet Daniel prophesied when he interpreted Nebuchadnezzar's dream at the time of the exile. Do you remember that? In Daniel chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a great statue made of different materials, layered. And that great statue, towering though it is, is suddenly, in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, dashed by a stone. It is struck. And then that stone which struck the statue begins to grow and it grows into a mountain and it fills the earth according to Nebuchadnezzar. And so if you will recall that story, if you've read that before, you know that Nebuchadnezzar's troubled by this dream. He doesn't know what he means, but he knows on the basis of his assistants, those around him, they tell him, there is a man who can interpret this for you. His name is Daniel. And so Nebuchadnezzar says, bring him in. I want to hear his interpretation of the dream. He's going to tell me what I dreamed. And then he's going to tell me what it means. And here's what he says. verses 44 and 45 of Daniel chapter 2. And in the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed. Nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end. And it shall stand forever, just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human man, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold." Daniel says, that stone which breaks down this representation of the kingdoms of the world is itself a kingdom which shall not fail. It is a kingdom from God. So when we look at the kingdom past, described in the Old Testament, what do we find? We find that God always, forever rules over all things. That cannot and it does not change. Yet, He established a redemptive kingdom among His people, Israel. But this redemptive kingdom was only provisional. Temporary. And it quickly faded such that Israel's own prophets directed the hopes of the people toward a kingdom to come. And that kingdom would come in the latter days, in the days of the Messiah. And this is why Jesus could speak of the kingdom as if it had never come prior to his own day. What came before so paled in comparison that it was hardly worth mentioning. Here's how the reformed theologian Gerhardus Voss explains it. Voss says this, to Jesus's mind, the kingdom involved such altogether new forces and such unparalleled blessings that all relative and provisional forms previously assumed by the work of God on earth seemed by comparison unworthy of the name. Thus, while Jesus would not have denied that the Old Testament institutions represented a real kingdom of God, the high sense with which he had invested that term made it unnatural for him to apply it to these. In other words, With Jesus, something far, far greater had arrived, something which put these other past temporary kingdoms to shame, such that they could hardly even be called kingdoms. With Jesus, that latter day's kingdom was dawning. And therefore it is with that recognition, that transition point, that we pass from kingdom past to kingdom present. moving from the situation as it existed before the coming of Christ to the situation as it came to be during Jesus' ministry. Among the crumbling ruins of Israel's temporary provisional kingdom appeared the incarnate Christ. And the Gospels make clear that he came into the world in large part to introduce God's kingdom on the earth. The very first words of Jesus contained in the Gospel of Mark, they show this unambiguously. Mark 115 recounts the thundering words and the profound message of Jesus where he says this, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. repent, and believe in the gospel. That's the message of Jesus. In so many ways, the rest of Jesus's public ministry is simply an unpacking of that statement. Now that is, in fact, the way in which the same statement is cast in the Gospel of Matthew, where it is presented as a summary of Jesus' work once he began his public ministry. Matthew 4.17 stands just after the baptism and temptation of Jesus, and it lies at the very head of his public ministry, and so it sums all that is going to come up by saying this, from that time, Jesus began to preach saying, repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." And in many points in his teaching, Jesus elaborates on this Kingdom theme, whether under the title, Kingdom of God, or under the title used uniquely in Matthew's gospel, Kingdom of Heaven. Both refer to the same thing. Matthew's terminology probably reflects his Jewish audience who were very careful in their using of the name of God. And both referring to the same thing are mentioned so numerously that to attempt to address each and every one would carry us well beyond our time limit this morning. So we are just going to identify here briefly some main themes arising from the gospel teaching on the kingdom. What is the kingdom in the present as Jesus has brought it? Let's, with that question in mind, make four observations. Four observations about the kingdom from Jesus' teaching. And our first observation is this. The kingdom was introduced and inaugurated during the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ. By saying this, we are simply asserting that a real change came upon the world when the Lord began proclaiming the Kingdom in His preaching. Jesus was not just describing something which had always been. He's not just verbalizing that universal reign of God over the world. He is describing something which He brought with Him. And it suddenly had a real presence, a real place among those to whom he was ministering. A few examples will show this, I think. Matthew chapter 10. Jesus there sends his disciples out to preach and to heal. And what were they to announce to their hearers as they went out? Well, they were to announce this, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. In other words, it has drawn near to you. It's here. Likewise, when Jesus is accused of being demon possessed for casting out demons in Matthew chapter 12, he counters that by saying, if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. It has come upon you. And then most pointedly, in Luke chapter 17, verses 20 and 21, when the Pharisees ask Jesus when the kingdom is coming, here's what he says. The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed. Nor will they say, look, here it is, or there. For behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you. In other words, it was already there. It was already in their presence because Jesus was in their presence. And so when we listen to the language about the Kingdom of God in the New Testament, we find that it's at hand. It has come upon those who have encountered Jesus. It's in the midst of His hearers. And so with just those three examples, we may conclude that when King Jesus came, He brought the kingdom near. He extended its power over people through his ministry, and he set up something which would keep growing, even if it was not immediately detectable by all. It would start small, like a grain of mustard seed, he says in Matthew 13, but it would expand. And in this way, the kingdom had come with Jesus. It was definitively, objectively introduced to the world when he was on the earth. But our second observation is that though it did not come in the observable ways that people might have expected, it did come with signs and wonders. The kingdom came with signs and wonders. This is a point which has already been raised partially by those scripture examples that we just cited. Remember, Jesus says that those who witnessed the casting out of demons had experienced the kingdom of God coming upon them. And this is reinforced by passages like Matthew 9. Matthew 9 is basically just a big collection of healing stories. And near the end of the chapter, the overarching theme of the whole section is stated like this. And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming, what? The gospel of the kingdom. and healing every disease and every affliction. The preaching of the kingdom and the healing of the sick, the casting out of demons, those two things went hand in hand everywhere that Jesus went because the kingdom came with signs and wonders. And so when Jesus went around announcing the kingdom, it was not a mere abstraction that he was marketing. He was showing off the power of God's kingdom over the kingdom of sin, over the kingdom of Satan as he introduced it. So Jesus really did introduce this kingdom. It came with signs and powers. But our third observation is that it was something which could be entered through repentance and belief. The kingdom is entered through repentance and belief. This is important to note because many people were expecting Jesus as the Messiah to start a political kingdom by force. Many examples could show this. In the New Testament, they expected him to set up a realm, an actual realm, wherein he would dwell and reign and conquer his enemies. But in this inaugural kingdom form, the kingdom of God was to be primarily a spiritual reality. That's what they didn't expect. It was not a geographical area. It was the realm wherein he ruled over the hearts of men, blessing them and reckoning them as righteous. And the implications of this is that the kingdom wasn't something that you entered by traveling to a particular place and going through customs. It didn't work like that. It wasn't that sort of kingdom. It was something that you entered by repenting and believing. Again, what did Jesus say in Mark 115? The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. In other words, here's the kingdom. You want to come in? Repent and believe. And this remains the way into the kingdom today. It can still be entered by repenting or turning away from sin and trusting the Jesus who died on the cross and rose from the grave to graciously save those who have faith. That's the sort of kingdom this is. And so, we might provide something of a definition at this point. I came up with this so you could probably come up with a better one, but this is what I came up with. Based on what we've seen in the Bible so far, the kingdom of God, which Jesus inaugurated and introduced, it's something like the redemptive reign of God over men. It is the redemptive reign of God over men brought about by the Messiah through his gospel. And it is the redemptive reign of God over men brought about by the Messiah through his gospel wherein God regenerates governs and guides those who repent and believe. It is that blessed spiritual realm established among the disciples of Jesus where the God who is supreme is treated as supreme. It's his redemptive reign over sinners who have come to know the Messiah. So he regenerates us, he gives us new life, he governs us, he guides us, and teaches us how to live and conduct ourselves within his kingdom. That's what is being promulgated by Jesus when he speaks about this kingdom idea. And yet, even as we provide such a grandiose, or maybe not, definition, you can decide, we begin to get a sense of why Jesus could teach his disciples to pray to the Father. Remember, this is a sermon on the Lord's Prayer. Your kingdom come. If the kingdom introduced by Jesus, accompanied with great signs and wonders, is entered through repentance and belief, if that's how it grows, then we recognize there are many who have not yet repented and believed. And the body of believers who have entered the kingdom do not seem to match some of the great descriptions of the coming kingdom from the Old Testament. I mean, does the ragtag band of disciples which followed Jesus around during his earthly life, do they seem like the stone which Nebuchadnezzar dreamt of? Which destroyed the kingdoms of men and filled the earth. How about even today? How about all of those who have pledged their allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ today? We still make up a minority of the earth's population. And so with those things in mind, it's here that we want to briefly anticipate our discussion under the third heading. the kingdom future, because in the present age, it's absolutely true that Jesus has introduced, he has inaugurated a kingdom. His ministry kicked things off. And ever since, he has been building a kingdom of grace, wherein he rules over men and women who bow their knee to him. Yet that kingdom of grace, which is so often invisible in the present, will one day take on the characteristics, not just of a kingdom of grace, but a kingdom of glory, because then every knee will bow, every tongue will confess Jesus as Lord, and then nowhere in all of the cosmos will Satan's power be seen. That is the final form of the kingdom which Jesus has already established. The final form of the kingdom will be tangible, it will be visible, it will be radiant. But for now we wait for it. So where then can we look for a tangible expression of God's kingdom today if such a thing is to be found? To answer that is to come to our final observation about the kingdom in Jesus' teaching which is that in the fourth place, the kingdom's most visible manifestation in the present age is the church. The kingdom's most visible manifestation in the present age is the church. And this connection is made by Jesus in his declaration to Peter in Matthew 16. When Peter confesses Jesus to be the Christ, Jesus says this, and I tell you, you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Now that statement, you may know, raises lots of questions. There's a lot of things that we could say about it, but I just want to focus on one point right now, which is that Jesus draws the kingdom and the church together in the most intimate way in these words. The church is built on Peter, and to him the keys of the kingdom are granted. The two realities go hand in hand. And so consequently it does surprise us that it is to the church in Colossae that the Apostle Paul writes that he has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son. And it's to the seven churches in Asia that the Apostle John writes of Jesus as the one who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father. To him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. So in a very real way, the church is the visible kingdom outpost wherein kingdom members experience the governance and blessing of the king while they await the coming of the kingdom's final form. This is where you're going to experience the kingdom most tangibly while we await the kingdom coming in its fullness. And so taking all of those four observations together, that the kingdom has come in Jesus' day with signs and wonders, that we enter it through repentance and belief, and yet the most tangible form that it takes today is the church. Taking all of those observations together, then we ask, and I think we're in a good position to answer, what does it mean to pray your kingdom come? To pray your kingdom come is to ask the Father to continue winning over the hearts of men through the proclamation of the gospel, extending His spiritual reign. It is to ask the Father to make His power known in a special, redemptive way upon the earth, freeing hearts and minds from the tyranny of sin and Satan. It is to ask God to rule in the hearts and minds of those who already call themselves disciples. It is to pray for the church, the church's ministry, the church's mission, and the church's officers. It is to ask God to advance his cause among the multitudes of the earth as the gospel goes forth. In short, it is to ask God to apply the work which Jesus did during his earthly ministry to our situation today, continuing to bear fruit. That the kingdom coming in the present looks like the gospel of Jesus going forth and bearing fruit. building up the church, blessing the saints, drawing us into greater conformity and greater obedience to our God. For the kingdom to come in the present is for God to rule over us as those upon whom He has placed His name. And we want that. So you might say that when we pray, your kingdom come, we are simply stating our desire for God to make the kingdom, which was like a mustard seed, during Jesus's earthly ministry so great that it's like a towering tree in which the birds of the air can make their nests. We're asking for that gospel growth in the present kingdom of God in the present age. So congregation, with Jesus the kingdom has come and yet Jesus has also taught you to pray for the kingdom to come. Both things remain applicable in the present age. It is here and we want more of it. Rightly understood, then, there's no better prayer for members of a church plant to pray because we are engaged in kingdom building work. Not because we build it with our own hands, but that through us, the Lord is doing the building. Jesus is building up his church. And this means that we want this church plant to succeed, not for selfish reasons, at least it shouldn't be, but so that we might be able to participate in God's yes to the request, your kingdom come. That's what we want to happen here. The coming of the kingdom through the building up of the church, which is the visible expression of God's reign upon the earth in the hearts and minds of unbelieving men, who have been transformed, regenerated, governed, and now guided. He is doing something remarkable in the present among us, which began during the earthly life of our Lord. Your kingdom come, we pray. However, that brings us to our final point this morning, which we will touch on briefly. We've considered the state of the kingdom in the past before the incarnation of Christ. We've considered the state of the kingdom in the present and thought through what it would mean to keep praying your kingdom come. But now we want to reflect upon the fact which we've already anticipated and highlighted, which is that the kingdom has not yet reached its final form. There's more to be done. There's more to come. And this is what we mean when we say things like the kingdom has not yet been consummated. To speak of the consummated kingdom is simply to speak of the kingdom which has no more need of growth, improvement, or change. It is perfect. It is complete. And the sense that the kingdom was not yet consummated, the sense that that was the case was certainly present. among the disciples of Jesus, who could say to him, even after the resurrection, even after the resurrection, the disciples could ask Jesus, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? That was the question which the disciples asked Jesus just prior to his ascension in Acts 1.6. The kingdom had come, The age to come had broken into the present age. They had tasted heaven on earth. But the disciples had not shaken off all of their previous notions. They were still looking for the earthly restoration of Israel by a conquering political messiah. That's why they asked, is it time? Are you finally going to restore your kingdom here to Israel? They missed the point. But rather than outright rebuking them, what does Jesus do? He subtly gestures toward the future. He says to them, it is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his authority. In other words, not yet. And it's not your business to know. In the meantime, they were going to be granted the spirit to bear witness to the ends of the earth, building the church, that visible representation of the kingdom, and holding out this hope that the Jesus who was taken up from them into heaven will come in the same way that they saw him go into heaven. Remember, this is on the day of the ascension. They see Jesus go up, angels tell them, you will one day see him come down. They were learning that the kingdom was already present, such that they could act with kingdom power and authority, but it was also not yet such that they would be left to wait for the second coming of the one who had just ascended to heaven. The one who ruled upon the throne in heaven would one day come back to make that kingdom visible. the earth. And this reading of Acts 1 harmonizes sweetly, I think, with the teaching of Paul in a place like 1 Corinthians chapter 15, 24 and 26. If you know 1 Corinthians 15, you know that Paul was talking all about the resurrection. He's drawing out its implications He's showing what it means that Jesus was the first fruits of the resurrection and that others would come with him eventually in that resurrection. And in the midst of that conversation he concludes that the risen Jesus, because he has risen, he is continuing to reign in the present. And when he returns, that is when everything will finally be completely, totally in subjection to him. Then the kingdom would be consummated. Here's what Paul says in the text, now quoting. He says this, then comes the end. When he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. The kingdom has come, Jesus is reigning, but not every enemy has fully been destroyed. He's going to do that. It will happen in the blink of an eye. You know the phrase, blink of an eye, Jesus will return, the resurrection will occur. 1 Corinthians 15, that's where that phrase comes from. That's where it's used. And so this final victory of the king, when his kingdom is completed, is something which will occur in conjunction with the resurrection of believers at the end of the age when Jesus comes in power. So even as we say with confidence that the kingdom has come, and that it is coming in the present, we can also see that it will come in power and glory at the end of all things. when Jesus comes again. And from this we may deduce then that another implication of that prayer, your kingdom come, is that it's not just a prayer for Christ's influence and reign on the earth today to expand through the propagation of the gospel of grace. It's not just a prayer for Jesus to keep building his church and thus his kingdom, though it is prayer for those things, yet because there is this still yet future aspect to the kingdom, A prayer for the kingdom to come is a prayer for consummation. It is a prayer for completion. It is to plead for Jesus' return. It is to plead for his final judgment of his enemies. It is to plead for the final salvation of the saints. And it is to plead for the creation of the new heaven and the new earth. It is, in essence, to make the prayer at the end of the book of Revelation our own. Come, Lord Jesus. Congregation, I hope this wide-angle look, past, present, and future, at the Kingdom of God in the Scriptures is helpful to you and that it will help you to discern what it means to pray, Your Kingdom Come. To pray your kingdom come is to pray for the further expansion of that kingdom which Jesus inaugurated through his gospel of grace. It is to pray for the church, which is the central and most visible expression of that kingdom in the present. and it is to pray for the consummation of the kingdom in glory at the second coming of Christ. And so, with those things in mind, let us join our hearts together as citizens of God's kingdom and pray together, your kingdom come. Let's go to the Lord in a word of prayer.